A Veiled Antiquity (Torie O'Shea Mysteries)

by MacPherson, Rett

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I’m going to stop telling you to stop snooping around, as long as you don’t do anything illegal. Don’t break into anybody’s house, that sort of thing. Don’t endanger yourself. If you can do whatever it is that you do without breaking the law, have at it.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “Nothing. If it doesn’t endanger you to snoop around and ask questions, then I’m not going to tell you not to anymore.”

  “I get it. You think that if you tell me it’s okay that it will take all the fun out of it and I’ll just stop on my own. It won’t work, because that’s not why I do it. All I know is that I get something in my head and it won’t leave until I have an answer for it that is satisfactory. It drives me nuts. That’s it. Curiosity. There are no hidden motives,” I said.

  “Whatever you say. All I know is sometimes I need the input of outsiders. It helps to get a fresh approach.”

  “Oh, paleeze,” I said. “I’m choking from all the cow manure in here.”

  “I’m serious. You helped me a lot on the Zumwalt case. And you made the right call on this one. Duran missed the two glasses on the table bigger than day. So if you want to give me advice in the future I’ll accept it,” he said. “As long as you don’t break any laws or any bones, get yourself killed, or get anybody else killed. And of course you have to tell me everything you find. But don’t tell anybody else,” he said.

  “I can’t tell anybody? It’s no fun if I can’t brag about it.”

  “You brag, the deal’s off.”

  “Oh, all right,” I agreed.

  He stood up and pulled a clear plastic bag out of his pants pocket. “Is this yours?” he asked.

  It was an inhaler for asthma.

  “No. Why would you think that?”

  “I found it in Marie’s house. Marie did not have asthma.”

  “Where in the house did you find it?” I asked.

  “In the entrance from the living room to the kitchen,” he said.

  “That’s what I tripped over,” I said more to myself than to him.

  “What?”

  “Well, I stepped on something in the house that was sort of round and I fell. It was in the same area.”

  “I’m betting whoever was there that night dropped it.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll bet that if he or she didn’t have an extra, then they are having to get a refill.”

  “I’m already checking the surrounding pharmacies. I’ll get a list of everybody that got a refill or a replacement in the last week.”

  He was silent now. Neither one of us had much more to say to each other.

  “Anything you want to tell me?” he asked.

  I thought about the photocopies that Camille had. “Not yet. Maybe by this evening I will have something,” I said. “Maybe something from Marie’s.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  I didn’t think there was any point in getting Camille involved in all of this if there was no reason to. I would just wait and see what the documents said first. Then I’d tell him.

  “Okay,” he said as he put his hat back on. “I hope your headache goes away soon,” he said.

  “Oh, I doubt that it will.”

  Ten

  I was released from Wisteria General at noon. Rudy came with Mary to drive me home. Mom was waiting at the door as I came up the steps.

  “I can make you a bed on the couch if you want. I don’t think you should be climbing too many steps,” she said.

  “I’m fine. Really. I’m just a little stiff. All I did was bump my head. They just kept me overnight for observation.”

  She looked tired, I noticed. Dark smudges lay underneath her eyes, ruining her otherwise perfect creamy complexion. I wondered if she was tired from just being up in the middle of the night worrying about me, or from being up all night convincing Sheriff Brooke to call his truce. I was certain that Mother had pep-talked him just as Rudy had with me. This whole idea was probably Rudy and Mother’s to begin with.

  “Is that Speed Racer I hear coming in the door?” My grandmother of eighty-one years came in from the kitchen.

  “Hello, Granny,” I said.

  She gave me a hug. It was a warm, nurturing, loving hug. Then she smacked me on the butt as hard as she could. “You need a good spankin’, that’s what you need. You better take that offensive driving course that Tobias was telling us about at bingo last week.”

  “Granny,” I pleaded as I rubbed my backside.

  “I mean it,” she said. Her eyes were like my mother’s, dark-brown and large. Her skin was creamy and clear, too. But Granny had a square face and much higher, more prominent cheekbones than my mother.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Well, I’m making you chicken and dumplings,” she said.

  That settled it. I wouldn’t feel bad for long. Chicken and dumplings was a cure-all. At least for me.

  “And,” my mother added, “I made a lemon chiffon pie.”

  Heck, I’d be doing a hoedown by sunset.

  I went up to my bedroom intending to lie down to take a nap. But I ended up in the office instead. I pulled some books off of the shelf and started thumbing through them. I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular, just everything in general. I was looking for information that would tell me the state of France in 1756. The Age of Voltaire seemed like a good place to start.

  The phone rang.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Hello, Victory.”

  “Oh, Sylvia. I probably won’t be in today, but I will be in tomorrow. I know the Octoberfest starts in three days.”

  “That’s quite all right, Victory. I’d like for you or Rudy to come by the Gaheimer House sometime today. I have something for you.”

  “Oh.” There was not much else I could say to that. Sylvia was not the type of person to give or buy things for people. I don’t think I’d ever received a gift from Sylvia in my life.

  “I’m in no hurry. Did you find enough bands for the bluegrass festival?” Sylvia asked.

  “Yes. It’ll work out great. There are thirty days to the Octoberfest, so I found ten bands. Each one will play three days.”

  “Wonderful. You can fill me in on the rest tomorrow,” she said and hung up.

  Wonderful? Nothing was ever wonderful with Sylvia. I glanced at my watch. It was two o’clock. I suddenly remembered that I had to pick up the translations from Camille at three. I put the book on my desk and headed downstairs.

  “Rudy, can I borrow your van?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “I have an appointment that I forgot all about at three o’clock.”

  My mother looked at me as if I had grown fangs and my grandmother looked as though she was going to smack my other cheek.

  “I’ll be back before Rachel is home from school. It will be in plenty of time to eat dinner.”

  Silence.

  “I really cannot miss this appointment.”

  “I’ll drive you, how’s that?” Rudy asked.

  “Okay, fine. But I have to stop by the Gaheimer House on the way out,” I said as I grabbed my purse. “And I have to stop by Wilbert Reaves’s office.”

  “Torie!” my mother said.

  “What?” I asked when I reached the door. She didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “Never mind.”

  I shut the door and went down the steps. I climbed into Rudy’s silver Transport and buckled my seatbelt. “I really appreciate this, Rudy.”

  “Mmm-huh.”

  “Really. Did you feed the chickens this morning? Hey, where was the dog?”

  “Fritz was in the backyard.”

  “Fritz?” I asked. I stared at him in disbelief. “What? You named the dog? It’s not our dog. How could you name the dog? How could you name him Fritz? I found him. Don’t I have any say-so in what his name is?”

  “He looks like a Fritz. I couldn’t help it,” he said. He put his blinker on and
turned. “Rachel and Mary went spastic when they saw the dog.”

  “Yeah. I’ll bet my mother did, too.”

  “Well, I wasn’t too thrilled, I’ll have you know. But how was I supposed to tell them they couldn’t keep the dog when he was licking their faces and wagging his tail? And every time Mary took a step, she’d trip over him because he was right under her feet. You should’ve seen it, Torie. It was so funny.”

  “It’s not our dog.”

  I was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t Rudy’s head that had gotten hit instead of mine.

  “I know that. I put an ad in the paper and I told the girls if nobody answered it in a week that they could keep it.”

  “Rudy! My mother—”

  “I couldn’t help it,” he said. “You should’ve never put the dog in your car in the first place.”

  “Well, I didn’t. He sort of found me.”

  Rudy pulled into Wilbert Reaves’s parking lot and turned off the van. We walked in and smiled at Jamie Thorley seated behind the desk. The building always reminds me of one of those cheap mobile homes on the inside. Not the really nice deluxe ones, but the tacky ones with the plain brown paneling and indoor/outdoor carpet.

  “Hello, Rudy,” she said. She has the biggest, bluest eyes on the planet and her brain is pretty much as clear as her eyes. She smiled as big as she could, reminding me of those child stars on Broadway.

  I was forgotten for the moment. My husband is as cute as a bug’s ear and all the young girls think so, too.

  “Hello, Jamie,” he answered her. “Torie needs to see Wilbert.”

  “Oh, hiya, Torie. He’s got a client in there right now,” she said.

  Just then, Wilbert walked out of his office with a very pretty woman in her mid-fifties. Wilbert is about thirty-eight and short. He would make a good horse jockey if he lost about twenty pounds.

  “Torie,” he said. “I was just thinking about you. Seems we had a little mixup the other night.”

  “Yes, Jamie said you’d be at Marie’s around seven. You never showed up.”

  “I said I’d be at Pierre’s around seven.”

  I looked at Jamie who was chewing her gum to death. “Hey, Dijon, Pierre. They were both French. Coulda happened to anybody.”

  “Of course it could have,” Wilbert cooed. “Hey, Rudy. How’s your golf game coming?” he asked when he suddenly realized that Rudy was in the room.

  “I don’t play golf,” Rudy answered.

  “Of course you don’t,” Wilbert said.

  “Have you got a few minutes?” I asked him.

  “Not really. Oh, hey, this is Marie’s sister. Yvonne Mezalaine.”

  “Hello,” she said in a French accent.

  “Sister?” My mind was racing. Marie’s family tree mentioned two sisters and neither one of them was named Yvonne.

  “Half sister, really,” she said. “And you are?”

  Her family tree did not mention any half sister at all.

  “A friend of hers. A dear, dear friend,” I lied. Rudy was giving me a weird look. I just smiled at him. “She never mentioned you, Ms. Mezalaine. As a matter of fact, you’re not on her family charts either.”

  “She never put me on her charts. We had a row many years ago. So, you’ve seen the charts then?”

  “Oh, yes, in detail. Studied them in fact.”

  Her green eyes narrowed on me. I caught a glimpse of Rudy doing the same thing.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Mezalaine,” Wilbert interjected. “This is Victory O’Shea. She is our resident historian and, you know, historical person.”

  “Aah,” she said. “Your name is Irish. But you have some French, no? You look it.”

  “Yes. My paternal grandmother was all French. My husband is the Irishman.”

  “Aah,” she said again. “It is an impressive family tree, is it not?”

  “Mine?”

  “No, Marie’s.”

  “And yours, too,” I corrected her.

  She looked at me for a minute, confused.

  “You said Marie’s, but it would be yours, too, at least part of it. And we’re related, actually, too.”

  Rudy coughed and tried to walk nonchalantly to the door. That’s marriage talk for let’s get the heck out of here, now.

  “How so?” Yvonne said.

  “We’re both descendants of Charlemagne.”

  She only smiled then and turned back to Wilbert. “I go now, Monsieur Reaves. We will speak again.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said and watched as the elegant woman slinked out of his office and left me in complete silence.

  “Can’t talk now, Torie. Catch me later,” he said as he shut himself behind the doors to his office. I really didn’t care for Wilbert Reaves too much, and it was things like this that just affirmed my dislike all the more.

  * * *

  “I’ll wait here,” Rudy said as he pulled in front of Camille Lombarde’s house.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because then you’ll feel guilty for leaving me out here with the car running and you won’t stay as long,” he said.

  “That’s what you think,” I answered him.

  He gave me a condescending look and turned off the engine.

  “I’ll hurry,” I said.

  We had arrived maybe fifteen minutes early. I didn’t think Camille would mind. She looked tired when she answered the door. It appeared as if she got out of bed, took a shower, and then didn’t do any of her normal grooming, like curling her hair or applying makeup.

  “Is it time already?” she asked.

  “I’m a few minutes early,” I said as I stepped into her foyer.

  Some of the photocopies lay out on the table in the den, the others I could not see. She offered me a seat, which I took.

  “Well, I don’t have them all done,” she announced.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I couldn’t get them all finished. The ones that I didn’t finish are in my safe. You can take these with you and come back for the others, when I get them translated.”

  “Oh” was all I managed.

  “They’re quite interesting. I translated one of the coded ones, and tried to decipher the code all night. I had no luck. I suppose I shouldn’t have done that; then I might have gotten them all finished.”

  She handed me a piece of paper that was in her handwriting.

  “Go ahead, read it. That’s the letter to your countess.”

  I read silently.

  April 1756

  Dearest Countess,

  It has been many years since we’ve seen each other. I am eighty-two now, and have been diagnosed with liver ailment. I shall not live out the year. It is my wish that you accept my confession bravely.

  The rumor of Louis XIV having a twin brother at birth is but that … a rumor. I know this for certain. In 1694 I was called to the island of Sainte Marguerite. His Majesty wished to make a point by giving me the body of your beloved cousin, the former Archbishop of Reims. It is a fact that he died in 1694 and that he was replaced by his valet from 1694 until the valet’s death in 1703, at the Bastille. At the time Louis did not know of my connections to your family, or he would have never entrusted me with the disposal of your cousin’s body. And it has taken me this long to confess it, out of sentimental duty and the fact that your family was right. You and I know, only too well, the terrible betrayal in the Order from 1700 to 1730. They were no longer a threat to His Majesty in 1703. If I had acted in 1694, when I knew the truth, that might have given you time.

  Events are in motion to rectify the damage done by the internal war. Fear not! You and yours will be avenged!

  Your cousin is buried at the Château Blanchefort near Rennes. His information to use against the crown is entact, and somewhere safe. Had I but known then that your family was right … I would have done differently. Please forgive me.

  It is up to you, dearest Countess, to see to it your cousin’s heirs receive their due. You must not fail.

&
nbsp; Respectfully Yours,

  Antoine

  Wow. I looked up at Camille, who had been watching me closely. Her gaze darted around the room and finally landed on me again.

  “I don’t want to excite you,” she said. “But I think that the information that this man had against the French crown is in those other photocopies that I have in my safe.”

  “Wow.”

  “Here’s another letter that I translated. If I’m not mistaken, it was written here in the United States to somebody back in France. Read it.”

  December 1922

  Philippe,

  Of which we were speaking earlier: Indeed it is pertaining to 35–40 and 90–95. Just as we had planned. Who is the heir? Sauniere was a fool. It was but a part, one minuscule part, of what the Order is capable. This should have been taken care of long ago. Know that what we speak of is as it should be. Please send me appropriate documentation and code that you have received and understood this.

  I grow weary … three have died because of this already. There are many Germans here. I long for France.

  Awaiting,

  Gaston

  She handed me one last piece of paper that looked like some sort of game. “This is one of the coded documents. It’s the only one that I translated.”

  I stared at it for the longest time as if it would reveal itself to me. Instead, my headache got worse.

  16 5 19 18 5 5 11 – 18 24 4 20 19 1 – 25 4 8 5 – 6 11 15 – 25 3 20 19 1 – 12 6 19 – 6 11 15 – 11 4 11 5 19 1 – 25 4 8 5 – 6 11 15 – 11 4 11 5 19 1 – 12 3 11 14 – 19 24 5 20 5

  And on it went for another ten or fifteen lines like that. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think, for that matter. Camille looked at me as if she expected me to say something.

  “I … uh … I don’t know what to make of this.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Well, surely, this information can’t do anybody any harm, can it? I mean, there is no crown in France any longer for it to hurt.”

  “What makes you think somebody would get hurt over it?”

  I only shrugged.

  “What you’ve got here is the find of the century,” Camille said. “If for no other reason than from a strictly antiquarian viewpoint.”

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t translate the rest of them. Maybe I should just turn them over to a university, or even the French government.”